I genuinely did not see this coming in August. Back then I was thinking automatic promotion, the play-offs if things didn’t go to plan. Oli Lynch was going to tear League Two apart, Mo Faal was going to make fools of all the doubters who had questioned his ability. Rhys Walters and George Hall would finally burst into life, unfurling themselves like flowers finding the sun after a long winter. Kyle Dempsey had arrived in Burslem. The pieces were all in place, the narrative waiting to be written. This is precisely where my head was before the season kicked off.

Instead, we have whatever this shit is. Sitting 23rd in League Two as we approach November, eleven league games played, six goals scored.

And I have another confession to make: I thought we’d turned a corner after the Grimsby, Chesterfield and Gillingham games. Seriously, I thought here we go. And, granted, where the goals were going to be coming from remained an unsolved mystery, but we looked a fairly rugged, uncompromising outfit, difficult to play against. Not pretty, but certainly effective enough. And then York happened last Saturday and we’re back to exactly where we were before the Grimsby game, stuck in that same repetitive doom loop: decent enough start, limited threat, growing anxiety, second-half collapse, go home, drink yourself senseless, cry yourself to sleep. Right now Vale feels like a bleak piece of existential theatre, endlessly repeating the same miserable act.

It’s really difficult to see any of our strikers catching fire, no matter which angle you look at it from. After an encouraging display against Grimsby, Max Watters has been nothing short of horrific since. It’s a shame, he had me believing. They all have, to be fair, because you have to cling to something. No matter how bad things are, hope always sneaks back through the letterbox eventually. It sits down at your kitchen table, helps itself to a brew, and starts whispering nonsense in your ear. “He’s the one” it tells you, “once he’s got his first goal the floodgates will open” and every time, like a complete fucking idiot, you listen. Hope is nothing more than a sophisticated form of gaslighting.

My boy Oli isn’t showing a great deal, is he? In fact it feels like his performances diminish every time he comes on the pitch. Deary me, his confidence looks completely shot to pieces right now. Figuero, at least, has shown flashes, he’s definitely a livewire, although maybe a little raw, the sort of player who’ll lash an outrageous thirty-yard screamer one week (hopefully) and then spend the next three games missing sitters in the six-yard box. Right now, though, I think he’s our best bet.

Where do you even begin with the Tyreece Simpson saga? A summer panic buy who arrived nowhere near the fitness levels required, showed next to nothing in those fleeting glimpses we’ve been given, and then, yesterday, gets shipped out on loan to Southend Utd and scores on his debut! I mean, what the fuck is going on? Why would he suddenly remember what a striker is supposed to do on the day he leaves?

And don’t get me started on the whole Jayden Stockley fiasco. Just don’t. It’s incomprehensible. Ben Waine? Well, he’s just here, isn’t he. Maybe play him against Scunthorpe in the FA Cup, that seems to be his thing.

Six goals in eleven League Two games. Twenty-third in the table. Just one solitary point gained away from home. There is no way of arranging those numbers into something remotely respectable; they just sit there on the page like an unpleasant smell that refuses to leave the room. It is shameful. It is embarrassing. I would love to be writing about our attacking verve, spinning tales of thrilling movement, ruthless finishing, defenders shaking with fear. I would love to be telling everyone that League One beckons just over the horizon. But six goals in eleven games. Six. And two of those were penalties. It’s a massive issue.

And it’s probably one that a January rummage through football’s bargain bins isn’t going to solve. The January window is football’s great act of collective self-deception, optimism masquerading as strategy. A month in which everyone goes sifting through everyone else’s unwanted pile of spare parts, desperately hoping that amongst the rubbish and bin juice hides a hidden gem, a season saver, a messiah. There usually isn’t.

The question may simply be this: do we have enough goals elsewhere in the side to drag ourselves towards some vague notion of respectability? Who knows. I mean, obviously we’ll grind out enough results at Vale Park, we’re not going down, but ultimately this season is going to be a wholly frustrating experience, and that is nowhere near good enough.

But anyway, enough of the concerns. Football isn’t supposed to make sense. We all know the journey on this long and uncertain road: one moment you’re lost in the dark, convinced you’re drifting towards oblivion; the next you’re reaching for constellations, daring to believe there might be something beyond the void. Both my head and my heart are telling me that we beat Rochdale three-nil on Saturday despite everything I know and everything I have seen. Why? Because I have belief. I have ridiculous, defiant, magnificent, stupid belief. Salvation has to begin somewhere. Why not here? Why not now? Three nil Vale. I’m manifesting it, I’m believing it.

Three. Nil. Vale.